


i am easy to find

by mountainsounds



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, F/M, Fluff and Angst, Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-05-27
Updated: 2019-05-27
Packaged: 2020-03-20 10:06:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,079
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18990496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mountainsounds/pseuds/mountainsounds
Summary: She didn't fear death—she feared living more. This thought was what had driven her to King's Landing, from those she loved, and was also what had driven her from it afterward.The fear of living came for her again not an hour later in that very throne room, as the doors pushed open for what felt like the millionth time. Bustling bannermen filled the hall quickly, this time wielding bright, yellow cloths stitched with the thick antlers of stags. Baratheon bannermen, Arya realized with a start. Her heart leapt and fell all at once.**Arya returns to Westeros for the marriage of her brother, and is forced to reconcile with her ghosts.





	i am easy to find

**Author's Note:**

> sorry this got a bit angsty — it was supposed to be happy but then i had to deal w the 100000 plotholes d&d left behind. happy endings + fun ahead! i will love these two until my dying breath
> 
> #gendry's allowed to be mad at arya fanclub where u at!

Westerosi soil was firm, the way Arya remembered.

The first rays of sunlight were streaking across the sky like a dragon's breath when she pulled to shore. A flip of a few gold dragons to her crew and she made her way down to the dock, where the familiar build of a Kingsguard stood upon the banks of the bay. 

Brienne didn't complain as Arya led the way up to the Red Keep, only kept a firm hand on the Valyrian steel sword at her hip. Her uniform was new, a polished gold that glinted in the Southron sunlight, embellished with a three-eyed raven on the breastplate.

"So Bran's gone and abandoned the Stark sigil, then, is that it?" Arya demanded after being dumped into her sister's bedchambers.

"I expect he was looking for a fresh start," Sansa said, smiling lightly as she rose to greet her sister. The direwolves stitched into her charcoal gown swayed with her excitement. They appeared to be running toward something.

"So we're the only two who haven't renounced the bloody family name?"

Sansa chuckled, young and bright-eyed as ever. "You haven't?" Her cheeks flushed as she drew Arya into an embrace, and they swayed for a brief moment. She smelled like Winterfell, and it was enough for Arya to ignore the jab, eyes fluttering shut before she pulled away.

"How long have you been back in this gods-awful place?" Arya asked. She pulled her tongue between her teeth, gazing around the chambers at Sansa's belongings—mostly dresses, attentively folded with her stitching needles in the corner.

"Close to a fortnight. Wedding prep, you know." Sansa watched closely as Arya wandered over to her things, grazing her fingers over a set of midnight blue skirts with silver detailing. "That's for you," she added.

Arya had no belongings anymore, save for Needle, but still visibly recoiled. "No way."

Sansa let out a frivolous laugh. "I just hope I got your measurements right." She stretched out a hand to bunch the ratty tunic at Arya's waist. "Should be alright. Gods, you still love to hide in a ridiculous brown sack."

"Haven't exactly had the time for sewing," Arya muttered.

"Well, you're not going to the wedding of the King of the Six Kingdoms in a pair of britches. I won't be associated with that kind of poor taste."

"Why not?" Arya shot back, as if they were children again. "It's who we are. The King's pretty sister, and the King's Horseface sister."

"Shut up," Sansa advised, reaching up to pull on a lock of Arya's dark hair. "You're beautiful, even if you prefer to roll around in dirt." She cupped Arya's chin softly. "It's good to see you again."

Arya's stomach flopped, a retaliation from the fondness in her sister's gaze. "I still don't want to wear a bloody dress."

Sansa sighed and dropped her hand. "You leave for three years, you never write, you wear the damned dress, Arya."

Clearly, becoming a Queen had taught Sansa how to shut her up.

*

 

The castle was a mere skeleton of what it had been before. The same arching columns stood erect. The walls were battered, the floors bruised. Only the prestige of the place was still breathing. Arya did not love the Red Keep any more than she had when she was a child, though the ravens tucking in and out of the hallways and the loss of lion sigils grazing the walls softened the blow ever slightly.

The Red Keep was lived-in, and it was dying. As Arya trailed her sister around the castle, she realized with a start that her body had become a vessel to the same feeling. She was exhausted—from traveling, from running from her past and her mind, from eating rats when she could no longer afford to feed both her crew and herself. She could feel the exhaustion setting in her bones.

Contrastingly, the years had only made Sansa more stunning. The more time Arya spent as her shadow those first few days, the more differences became apparent. The Queen in the North had new creases under her eyes. She fidgeted with her silver bracelets when she was deep in thought. Her laugh was lighter, dreamier—more robust than it had been in the days of the Long Night. 

Auburn hair cascaded to her waist now, a testament to the three years the sisters had spent apart. Despite its elegance, the length was an impediment to someone in combat—Arya was familiar with this fact, for she'd relinquished the hope of their mother's locks long ago. On Sansa, however, it was effortless. It was her liberation. She'd forgone the braids they had worn that year in the Keep—a Southron twist here, a braided Northern crown there—and the elegance of her new crown, silver and adorned with crystals, shone off her head and through her eyes.

Sansa's loyalties were no longer to the Crown, and yet she swept from lord to lady and back, complimenting the stitches that lined their cloaks and inquiring about the season's crops. Her chatter echoed through the Red Keep—or what was left of it. 

Three years had passed, but they were still rebuilding. As Catelyn had reprimanded Arya each time she yanked on Sansa's hair and received a week's worth of cold shoulders:  _it takes time to mend what has been broken_.

Arya was still mending what she'd broken. She had, with deliberation, missed the King's coronation. Moons ago, she had sat starboard, wondering if she would miss the wedding Sansa had dreamed of all her life. Now, in the Red Keep, the lack of a lord on Sansa's arm or a babe at her chest assured Arya that there had been little to miss. It had been missing the royal wedding that Arya had felt would be a misstep she could never take back.

When one of the Ironborn recruits aboard her ship had waved her over, untying a royally sealed scroll from the leg of a raven, she'd known where next to drop her anchor. And she'd worried about what—and who—would come of the voyage.

"You've been awfully quiet since you docked," Sansa mused, as House Hardyng sauntered from the throne room in a wave of bannermen and a clatter of armor. 

Arya quirked an eyebrow from where she stood beside her sister. "I came for Bran and Meera, not to be made into a highborn socialite.” She tossed Sansa a wry glance. “Surely you can't be surprised."

"I'm not," Sansa said calmly.

"Jon should be here," Arya said, to no one in particular. She was dismayed that he wasn't. Either he'd deliberately chosen not to come, or Tyrion's letter simply hadn't found him. Arya couldn't fathom which was worse.

The Stark sisters stood at the head of the hall. Not a week within the walls of King's Landing and Arya was already falling privy to the duties of a King's sister. Every time the doors to the throne room opened, signaling the arrival of the next constituents, their bickering would subside in favor of greeting their guests, leaving Sansa to fall into the temperament of an ice queen, and Arya to compose herself into stony-faced silence. 

Arya was no stranger to stillness, but truthfully, her silence came from reacquainting herself with fear. The last time she'd stood in these halls, they had been crumbling, tarnished by fire and blood. Sandor had fallen, relaying to her his last cunty message. 

She didn't fear death—she feared living more. This thought was what had driven her to King's Landing, from those she loved, and was also what had driven her from it afterward.

The fear of living came for her again not an hour later in that very throne room, as the doors pushed open for what felt like the millionth time. Bustling bannermen filled the hall quickly, this time wielding bright, yellow cloths stitched with the thick antlers of stags. Baratheon bannermen, Arya realized with a start. Her heart leapt and fell all at once.

_Gendry_  stood before them.

His black hair was matted to his forehead, far longer than it'd been the last time Arya had seen him. Thick and unyielding, the way she preferred it, it was curling at the ends, asking her to run her hands through it. A considerable amount of stubble lined his lips and chin. He was more built than before, if that was possible, with even broader shoulders that filled out his armor mercilessly.

Arya blinked.

She'd wanted to see him. She'd wanted to see him from the moment her ship left Blackwater Bay, but the desire had manifested tenfold when she'd laid hands on the scroll of the royal invitation, quickly signed by Tyrion Lannister. She'd wanted to ask every man, woman, and child in the West if he was alive, if the world really sought to lead her back to him yet again.

Arya felt the urge to grin, the lightness in her chest all at once too much to bear.

Had he expected to see her? Had he wanted to? Somehow she doubted it. Of all the nights lying awake in her cabin that she had allowed herself to ponder seeing him again, they rarely ended happily.

"Lord Baratheon," Sansa greeted him, smiling, clearly pleased at being able to receive a friendly face after a morning of dreary introductions. "Please forgive the King's absence. His Grace and the Hand are taken up in a small council meeting at the moment. We have been asked to receive nobility in his stead."

At the mention of 'we', Gendry's eyes slid over to Arya, as if he was noticing her for the first time. "Thank you, Your Grace." He nodded his gratitude. His voice was low as he turned to Arya with fierce eyes; it did something to her already coiling insides. "Lady Stark."

"Lord Baratheon."

A strained silence hung in the air at the exchange. Arya knew Sansa could not feel it. Years of talk about love and duty, and Arya thought surely her sister would have seen the physical manifestation of it staring her in the face. But it was a reminder that whatever this was, it belonged only to her and Gendry, and now Arya would face those repercussions alone.

Sansa's bony elbow sank into her lower back, and, ignoring the tight pinching in her chest, Arya dropped into a pitiful excuse for a curtsy. Septa Mordane must have rolled over in her grave. Gendry's blue eyes burned into her, and Arya sensed that she would have liked to be excused to run herself through with a sword.

Oh, how the sight of him made her want to run away—it was what she was best at. In the face of battle, Arya had never much run from anything, save for maybe the wights. This was a different kind of battle, however, always had been: it was Gendry, whom she had cut down time and again and still found her weakest points, whether he stood before her now or hundreds of miles away as she sailed the Western seas.

No, this had always been her greatest war, and Arya was in the thick of it.

"I'm sure you've had quite a journey from the Stormlands, my lord," Sansa continued in a rather cheery manner. "Ser Podrick will escort you to your chambers and collect you for the feast tonight."

Gendry nodded, grateful, and for a moment she saw a trace of sheer panic cross his face as he turned from the sight of her. She knew because she’d seen that same look in the hours before the walkers came, as she threw her body onto his, like he didn’t know how to handle her presence. It the same strain of flummoxed that she was feeling herself.

“Thank you, Your Grace,” he called to Sansa, voice firm as those hands of his. Arya’s eyes focused on the back of his head as he retreated out of the throne room, bannermen on his heels.

Duty was a nightmare she'd never wake up from. 

* 

 

She had never understood why rich people had so many feasts. They had feasts, but they also had feasts to celebrate the arrival of the people who came for the feasts. Even after years of curtsies and perfecting her ladylike manners, the thought plagued her still. Besides, feasts in this economy consisted of a communal bowl of soup and a few hundred bottles of wine and not much beyond that.

Arya ate at the head table with Bran and Meera and Sansa, to appease her sister more than anything, excusing herself quickly after. She would have preferred to eat in her chambers, or perhaps with Brienne. She wasn't the dramatic type, but even the Black Cells may have been better. She was too aware of Gendry, whose laughter rang particularly loud and who seemed to be on the receiving end of many pats on the back and wandering eyes.

The gods were fucking punishing her.

She ran into Davos while trying to exit the hall, nearly flattening herself against stone to get out of his way, but he was too chatty and bumbling to avoid, just as she remembered him.

"Lady Stark," he proclaimed, rosy-cheeked, surprise evident even with his thick accent. "I hadn't known you were coming.”

"Ser Davos," she replied coolly, offering him the same recognition. "Neither did I, yet here I am."

"I'm sure His Grace is happy to have you here. As we all are. You've been missed." He winked at her.

"I'm not sure His Grace feels much of anything anymore," Arya said with a shrug.

"Ah, details." Davos was such a father. He had always seemed to operate that way with both Jon and Gendry. Despite her heaving anxiety since Gendry's reappearance, no bone in Arya's body mistrusted him.

Instead she grinned. "Are you enjoying your reign as Master of Ships?"

His eyes twinkled in return. "Without giving too much away, my lady, if the Master of Coin were to mysteriously disappear aboard a vessel one of these days, I certainly wouldn't complain."

"I won't say a word," Arya promised. "I wanted to thank you for the ship you afforded me, Ser."

His eyes lingered on her for a moment, gaze questioning. "Did the trick, I imagine? You've been gone for quite some time." In the few days she'd been here, Arya had found this was a common topic rising from those who approached her. 

She paused, glancing back at the lengthy tables filled with jeering highborns and their bannermen, all gathered to celebrate her brother's betrothal. She was thrilled for Bran—really. She could not imagine this many people congregating in one room to drink in her honor, but he deserved it of anyone. 

"I wasn't sure what there was to come back to," she said.

Arya’s eyes lingered on Gendry, and perhaps it was the fatherly clout Davos possessed, or a piece of Ned Stark that had latched onto him in the Winterfell crypts, but he seemed to know exactly where her mind had gone. "There's quite a bit, if I'm not mistaken." He raised an eyebrow.

"He didn't appear very happy to see me," Arya said brusquely, dragging her eyes away from Gendry and back to the man before her. "But I suppose I wouldn't be either, were it the other way around."

Arya didn't know how much the smuggler knew about their relationship. She assumed very little, but the look in his eye left her uncertain. Did he know that she'd left Gendry in Winterfell without so much as a goodbye, and done the same in King's Landing shortly after? Did he know she dreamt of Gendry every night for a year, cornered by the Waif, exacting her revenge on Arya in malevolent destruction? Did he know she'd only left Gendry to protect him—not only from the Waif but from herself, her unfeeling inability to give him the life he had always craved?

Perhaps all Davos knew was that Gendry had loved her, but Arya could barely come to terms with that reality anymore. It all seemed very unreal—Arya Stark, being loved by a man.

Davos followed her gaze. They watched Gendry beam together. "I don't want to make assumptions, but he's a good lad. He'll come around. Needs a bit of time is all."

"Very bullheaded," she muttered under her breath, which prompted a laugh from Davos.

"Aye, but he's doing well. Ruling," he clarified, at Arya's watchful gaze. "The people support him."

Arya pressed her back against the cold stones, taking a deep breath. "I'm glad," she said. "I would have ruined it for him. He deserves to be happy."

Davos gave a reassuring pat on her shoulder. "I'm not sure power is the same thing as happiness, my lady." He looked pained to say it aloud. "I think we just do what we can."

He bowed his head and left her to her thoughts, and in his absence, Arya wished for her father more than anything.

* 

Four days before the wedding, Arya was trying, desperately, to reacquaint herself with being a noble lady of a great House. She still didn't like it, but at the very least it gave her something to do.

Sansa continued to berate her about only wanting to wear a jerkin, and though Bran remained unlike the boy she'd grown up with, she liked to sit with him, offering stories about her travels, though he'd apparently already seen all of them. He'd liked stories growing up, so she told them all the same. He often drifted in and out of consciousness, leaving her mid-conversation to take solace in a place Arya could barely comprehend.

More than anything, Arya tried to stay out of Gendry's way, convincing herself, to the core of her being, that he would seek her out if he so desired.

Her ability to remain hidden was the skill from the House of Black and White to which she was the most grateful; she could slip through the corridors on a cat's feet the way Syrio had always intended. She spent the afternoons hedging Sansa's requests to stroll through the regrowing gardens, and in the evenings, subject herself to more soup than had been readily available to her in years. When the opportunity presented itself, she would sharpen her skills with Bronn or Brienne, whichever knight was more willing to subject themselves to a beating.

Anywhere she knew Gendry would not be, she was sure to make her presence known.

That afternoon, Arya found him in the Tower of the Hand, looking quite sullen and stormy-eyed, the way he’d been when they first left Kings Landing together. Caught in a moment of weakness, she studied him quietly as he gazed off the balcony and down into the landing of the city. Trying to spot where the Street of Steel had once stood, she guessed.

"Gendry," she called, keen to startle him out of his reverie.

Gendry nearly jumped out of his skin, swearing loudly with a breath. On edge, he glanced towards where she stood in the doorway and became stony at the sight of her. "Fuck, it's just you," he muttered, tearing his eyes away for another glance down at the city. The least lordly thing to say was probably the best thing to break the tension. Arya passed him a languid smile.

He looked—seven fucking hells, he looked good, even when he appeared to have seen a ghost. She was a ghost to him, wasn't she? 

Then again, this man had survived far worse things than her, including the red priestess planting leeches on his cock—

Arya cursed herself in the recesses of her mind, heat rising in her cheeks. There were surely more pressing things to be thinking about at the moment than Gendry's cock.

"I was looking for Brienne, or Pod," she explained, rather lamely for a would-be assassin. Her hand twisted around Needle where it was sheathed at her waist. "Didn't mean to—I didn't know you'd be up here."

Gendry studied her closely, as though he was trying to put his finger on what in her had changed. His gaze was mistrusting, calculated, so far from what it had been the night he'd gotten on one knee before her. "I thought Davos might be here," he said, sounding grouchy. "I've barely had words with him since arriving."

For what it was worth, Arya seized her chance. She cocked her head to the side. "We haven't had many words either."

"Spare me, Arya."

"Oh, don't do that," she argued, anger flaring inside her, crossing the room to stand by him at the window. He was clearly pissed—he was allowed—and while it was a familiar look on him, part of her wanted to remind him of the effect she could have. Arya bit her lip. "I'd have found you earlier, but I didn't know if you would want to see me."

Gendry shrugged, and despite his insistent lack of eye contact she could spot his features hardening slightly. "Well, here's your answer."

It was a defense mechanism, his coldness. Arya expected it. Of all the years they'd known one another, he'd been an angry, brutal person—disenchanted with the world, his father, the Brotherhood—but rarely had it been directed at her. Now, he extended it to Arya like a trap, and she fell right into it.

"If you really wanted to avoid me, why did you come?" she asked hotly, breathing over his shoulder. "It's not as though you didn't know I would be here."

"I didn't. I've heard little about you since you took off except that you had no plans to return." Gendry laughed, though it was without feeling, so unlike the man she'd grown up with, her burning, bastard boy. "Besides, even if I'd known you were coming—couldn't bloody well ignore a request from the King."

"Seven Hells, you could've just made up an excuse," Arya snapped. "Said there was a storm or something, you couldn't get out of the city, I don't know." He scoffed at her, and she grabbed for his wrist, drawing him around to look her in the face.

"I'm in command of the Stormlands and you expect him to believe I don't know how to weather a  _storm_?" He wriggled his arm out of her grip.

"Not like it matters, you clearly didn't think of it."

Gendry glared at her so ferociously, Arya nearly flattened herself against the wall. "If it was so easy to back out of this, why didn't you do it? Had to wait for the perfect comeback moment?”

"He's my brother."

"He's my  _king_ ,” Gendry shot back emphatically. He lowered his voice to a domineering whisper. "And just in case you missed it, the King knows everything, Arya."

Arya rolled her eyes. "The King is the King because we stood in a circle three years ago and pointed fingers. None of this is real."

"It's real. This is reality for those of us who don't run from our problems."

Arya longed to reach out and touch him, to feel the lines of his face that only she knew and decipher what had changed there. But she had given up the right long ago.

"Seems like you're taking it seriously."

He growled. "You didn't leave me much choice."

Their height difference had become glaringly apparent the closer he'd drawn to her, and Arya's eyes now dropped to where his cloak was fastened around his shoulders, encrusted with the Baratheon sigil. It was jarring, how he looked so much like a lord now. A burst of pride shook through her.

_Ours is the Fury_. It appeared he had taken it to heart.

Gendry curled and flexed his fists several times before tearing from the room with his rage. Wherever he went, a storm must have followed.

Heat hung in the air in his wake, and it weighed on Arya heavily. She was still there when Brienne found her an hour later, back pressed against the cool tower wall, tracing the scars beneath her tunic. She'd never thought she could feel a cut deeper than those that ghosted her stomach. But Gendry Waters no longer loved her, and Gendry Baratheon appeared to despise her.

Bran was not the only broken one, she supposed, of the last of the Starks.

**Author's Note:**

> this is mostly written (think it'll be 2 or 3 chaps total) so an update will come shortly! it's my first time posting for this fandom + i rarely post my work in general, so i'd love some feedback if there's any <3
> 
> wedding is up next!!!


End file.
